January 19, 2008

How To Help

by hilzoy

A member of Andy Olmsted's family has just written me to say that if people want to do something in honor of him, they can send donations to a fund that has been set up for the four children of CPT Thomas Casey, who served under Andy and was killed while trying to help him. The address is here:

Capt. Thomas Casey Children's fund
P.O. Box 1306
Chester, CA 96020

Thanks so much.

Also, below the fold I am going to try to compile a list of the blogs that linked to Andy's final post, so that his friends and family can see some of them without having to go to the trouble of tracking them all down. I'm going to do this gradually -- it will take a while. I've been bookmarking them since Friday, and I think there are nearly 500. However, if anyone notices a blog post that I haven't found by, say, noon tomorrow, just leave it in comments, or email the kitty or me.

I can't tell you how much I've appreciated everyone's willingness to put politics aside on the threads about Andy, and the way this entire community has responded. Special thanks to everyone who has emailed me about comments that need to be taken down -- there were too many comments in the various threads for any one human to keep track of, and it helped a lot. It meant a lot to me, and I think it would have meant a lot to Andy. Thanks to you all.

[Update: Do not click "Continue Reading..." unless you want to see the long and growing list of links to Andy's final post. If you don't, just click "comments".]

[Update 2: Someone had asked me to bump this, but having the software eat most of the post and redate it was not exactly what I had in mind...]

Press and blog posts about MAJ Andrew Olmsted

(This will of necessity be incomplete. They are in no particular order, though I did move Jim Henley to the top, given what Andy said in his final post. They are all the posts I found; I haven't tried to screen for quality or anything like that. The basic distinction between 'posts that do more than just link' and 'posts that basically just link' is that the former contain some response or set of reflections, however brief, that I thought might be of interest to Andy's friends and family. So Tim Burke's "This post makes me feel as sad as anything I've read in years" counts as doing more, while a longer post that recites facts about where Andy blogged, how his last post came to be posted, etc., does not. Also, people who show some signs of having known Andy, either in person or via his blogs, are more likely to be in the first category. It is, however, of necessity a very rough sorting.

Comments

Gary: That's correct.

Thanks.

I was amused that the wiki entry has a picture of the Kremlin honor guard at their tomb of the unkown solder in Moscow, which I've been lucky enough to see. An entirely appropriate (and somber) memorial to the fallen.

I don't recall saying that about here, but I could have been confused. Google doesn't capture comments on some blogs, and it does on others; it depends entirely on whether the blog software is set to append "nocapture" after comments. In ObWi's case, comments are googleable.

But if you're referring to one of Andrew's blogs -- and it occurs to me that there's been no link on ObWi up until this moment to Andy's original blog, since Hilzoy wasn't aware of it until I mentioned it to her yesterday, while we were telling each other Andy stories -- then, yeah, andrewolmsted.com comments probably aren't googleable.

Thanks Gary,
I'm sure that would be awesome! In the meantime I will continue to tune in every once in awhile ( Three kids don't usually give me much time to be online with the exception of the past few weeks) to see what you all are talking about.
lisa

I think you said to me here, in response to a comment of mine that I was on a one-man google-bomb to have a "Bizarro World" search on google result in a link to redstate.com, that google didn't pick up comments.

But I could be mistaken about, well, that entire sentence.

I'm not sure this is the right way to put it, but I'm glad you (and hilzoy) were able to make it to the funeral.

Thanks Hilzoy. Uncle Wes (Andy's Dad)mentioned to me that he met you and Gary. No matter that your time with them face to face was short, it meant a great deal to them. Thank you for going. Is there a way we can trade e-mails? Let me know.
Lisa

Lisa: I just tried to post my email address, but apparently the software thinks it's spam. (??) As rilkefan said, email sent to the kitty (aka, clicking the "Email me" button under the picture of the kitty at the top of the page) will reach me.

I linked to an opinion piece from Scripps-Howard here, and I see that the link didn't, or at least doesn't now, work.

I noticed this because the same piece also appears here at Inside Bay Area.com/The Argus; it's by a John M. Crisp, and as I mentioned, it uses Andy's death as a political chit. While also misspelling his name.

Just a brief note to once again say how much it meant to me and Nancy to meet Hilzoy and Gary after the memorial service. I tried to find you to talk more but couldn't find you. I will continue to track you through this blog site and will also write to you from time to time. Bless you both.

Mr. Olmsted, I'd be delighted to be able to be in further contact with you, and Mrs. Olmsted, and Eric and Catherine, but I have no email address for any of you. Mine, as I mentioned above, is gary_farber at yahoo dot com.

(Please be warned that I'm a highly erratic and unreliable correspondent, however, with everyone.)